


Molten Red

by TSwiftEliot



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series)
Genre: Character Study, Extended Metaphors, M/M, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 03:25:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8473597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TSwiftEliot/pseuds/TSwiftEliot
Summary: Something unbearably hot and molten between his ribs.





	

When Red spends time with Green he feels like lava, like he's got something unbearably hot and molten between his ribs.

_Come on, I'll take you on!_

Sometimes it almost seems okay. That it's the same as any other liquid that warms you from within, as harmless as coffee on a cold day. Red thinks it might be okay, as he jogs over to another doorway where Green is standing, waiting for him. But deep down he knows how lava works. Slow, but consuming everything in its path.

Green could outrun such a slow form of destruction with ease, if he didn't keep stopping and waiting for it to catch up.

_Bonjour! Red! Imagine seeing you here! Red, were you really invited?_

He tries to hold it in, at first. Shuts his mouth so liquid rock can't pour out by mistake. But pressure begets heat begets volume. He feels like a big monster wearing the skin of a human boy. Like one day, his outsides will slough off and everyone will see him for the dangerous thing he is.

Red has a theory that Green enjoys flirting with danger, but not touching it. What else is he doing inside the Pokemon Tower? Inside the _Silph Co._ building? Why else does Green dance just out of reach of Red's advance, and fan his flames, if not to prove that he has mastery over a force of nature? Red worries about him. Worries that one day, Green will have run his way into a corner, and be swallowed up.

_I was looking forward to seeing you, Red! My rival should be strong to keep me sharp!_

Red wraps his hand around Green's arm to stop him from leaving, but Green twists it out of his grasp, roughly, then shoves him square in the chest as he makes for the door. In that moment, Red sees an invisible ring of heat-blisters, bubbling flesh where he made contact with Green's skin.

Yeah. This seems right. The things lava touches catch fire or explode or are subsumed, buried in volcanic rock.

_I am the most powerful trainer in the world!_

Pressure begets heat begets volume, more pressure, more heat. Red's external casing is melting. He is glowing, unignorable. He wants to tell people to leave and shut up, that magma was only pretty until you got close to it. That it burned and devoured anything nearby. It was only common sense that anything in nature stained red meant "stay away."

_We can go on winning and losing in Pokémon. But if nature so much as twitches, we can lose in a second. …_

Red looks in the mirror and sees cracking, and melting, and flames. So one day, he sets out for the coldest place he can think of. He hopes it can cool him enough make him solid again. But if it doesn't, then he hopes, at least, that he will be far enough away that his molten heart can't leak its flames onto something he doesn't want to destroy.

_...!_

For their honeymoon, Green drags him through the jade-tinted light of a jungle, up the side of a volcano, never letting go of his hand.


End file.
